


XII. The Hanged Man

by PostcardsfromTheoryland



Series: April Tarot Card Prompts [12]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fantastic Racism, Gen, Sensory Deprivation, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:29:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23627716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PostcardsfromTheoryland/pseuds/PostcardsfromTheoryland
Summary: The Hanged Man: A new perspective, confinement, lack of directionKeith isnevergoing on solo diplomacy missions ever again.
Relationships: Keith & Red Lion (Voltron)
Series: April Tarot Card Prompts [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686346
Comments: 8
Kudos: 102





	XII. The Hanged Man

**Author's Note:**

> Today's Tarot Card fic and also the "sensory deprivation" square for my BTHB.

Keith really, _really_ hated this entire planet.

The Siraesa had supposedly been allies with Altea back before the war started, so it only made sense that the Coalition try to contact them now. Except Shiro and Allura had been on another mission, which somehow meant Keith, despite being very much not a diplomat, had been next-in-line as the Red Paladin to go meet with them. Lance, Hunk, and Pidge were supposed to have gone with him, but at the last moment there’d been a distress call from a different sector of space, and Keith had stupidly suggested the three of them take that, as Coran had said being late to this meeting would not be acceptable to the Siraesa.

It _should_ have been a boring, somewhat awkward dinner with the minister while they agreed to terms.

What ended up happening, however, was that Keith had set off some kind of anti-Galra alarm the moment he stepped foot into the citadel, and one of his Siraesa escorts had immediately injected him with something to knock him out. He’d woken up strapped down to a table, and things had only gone from bad to worse after that.

That was about 6 vargas ago, which Keith only knew because, for once, he’d been paying attention to Coran’s briefing. The Siraesa went into a sort of mini-hibernation from the equivalent of 1am to 3am. Keith had a two hour window to get out, find his stuff, figure out where his pod was, and leave this godforsaken planet. If Allura really wanted an alliance with these people so bad, she could do it herself. And of course, the Siraesa hadn’t wanted him to take Red, who by this point would have razed the city to the ground looking for him if she knew he was in trouble. He’d felt some kind of quintessence-dampening technology as he approached the citadel, which would have been cool if it hadn’t been used against him, cutting him off from being able to feel Red at all. The Siraesa had some incredible technology, mostly to make up for that whole biological going dormant for two vargas a night thing, and Keith had seen what it could do firsthand. It was why Allura and Coran had been so keen to get them as allies, but Keith somehow thought that maybe wasn’t going to happen anymore.

God, why hadn’t they sent Pidge and Hunk? Those two loved technology, and Keith would much rather be fighting whatever Galra skirmish was happening in the Kiw Sector, but noooooo, had to go down the damn chain of command.

It was dumb luck that they’d neglected to tie his hands down again when they left or even lock the door, but that was really where Keith’s good luck ran out. They’d poured something that definitely felt like acid into his eyes that made him go blind, and they’d fucked with his ears so much that he couldn’t hear anything, either. He wasn’t sure what the point of the experiments or torture or whatever it was they were trying to accomplish was, and right now, he couldn’t bring himself to care. All he could do was stumble through the halls, hand on the wall to keep himself at least upright, and hope he didn’t run into any of the Siraesa awake when they shouldn’t be. He felt like shit on top of everything, nauseated and shaky, they’d taken _a lot_ of blood for whatever tests they were planning and he hoped they hadn’t actually poisoned him, but there wasn’t anything he could do now other than just...keep going.

Keith kept wandering down the corridors; he thought he was still in the citadel, but that was mostly a guess at this point. Every part of him was screaming just to find the front door and leave, but he couldn’t, not yet. But his sense of time might be off, and if he didn’t get out soon…

He still couldn’t feel Red at all, but the next corner he turned it almost felt like a tiny piece of her was at the end of the hall, so he pushed forward, wrenching open the door and groping blindly along a table to find his bayard. His knife was there too; he’d nearly stabbed himself with it, and he still felt awful but it was a relief to at least be armed again. His armor was probably in this room somewhere, but he didn’t have the time or the patience to find it. Better to just leave now and apologize to Coran for losing it later. The castle could make new sets of armor easily enough.

Getting out was a challenge all of its own. He’d spent what he estimated was about a varga and a half from the time he’d left his cell until he finally stumbled, quite literally, into a door that led to the outside. Then he made the painstaking trek through the giant square in front of the citadel, knowing he was out in plain sight and just hoping that he hadn’t misjudged the time. It was a relief to finally feel the transition from weird cobblestone to grass, though with it came the realization that he was barefoot and dressed in what was probably the Siraesa version of a hospital gown, and he _really_ didn’t want to walk through the forest in between the city and he’d landed his pod. With his luck, he’d trip on a tree root and impale himself on his knife.

But there was nothing for it.

He was never going on a solo diplomacy mission again.

He’d made it about a hundred yards into the forest when it felt like some kind of unknown pressure had lifted off of him, and suddenly Red was in his mind, all but screaming at him. She felt close - she must have realized something had gone wrong but couldn’t figure out where he was. He still couldn’t hear, but he definitely felt the thumps and vibrations as something very large landed right next to him, careless of the probably centuries-old trees she was destroying as she lowered her head to let him into the cockpit with a nudge.

Damn good kitty.

Keith was perfectly content to let her find her own way back to the castle - she’d clearly gotten here well enough on her own - but she was trying to direct his attention elsewhere, and he felt a jolt as some kind of weapon landed a shot on them.

His two varga window was up, and the cavalry had arrived.

He had a moment of panic before light and shapes started creeping into his vision: slowly at first, then all at once in a rush. It didn’t make sense; the perspective was off, and he couldn’t see his hands at all though he knew they were gripping the controls. It took him an embarrassing amount of time to realize it was _Red’s_ eyes he was looking through, not his own, but hey, he’d had a shitty night.

There were three different Siraesa fleets bearing down on them, but now that Keith could see (kind of, at least), even their advanced tech wasn’t a match for him and an enraged Voltron Lion. Just as he was shooting the last of the ships out of the sky, the Blue, Yellow, and Green Lions came into view, presumably back from their own mission. Red nudged his mind again, and he flinched as there was suddenly a lot of shouting in his head. His ears were still all messed up, but she’d managed to sort of feed the comms loop into his mind, and while it was distorted and echoey, it was better than nothing.

“Jesus _Fuck_ , Keith,” Pidge was saying.

“I ran into some problems.” He couldn’t hear his own voice, which was weird, but he must have sounded just as shitty as he felt, because both Lance and Hunk were giving him the “that looks like it hurt” hiss they’d perfected whenever anyone managed to fuck up in a training exercise and get their ass handed to them by an Altean robot.

“Do I want to know what happened?” Lance asked.

“I’m Galra. Also I’m pretty sure we’re not getting that alliance.”

“Well fuck the Siraesa and the horse they rode in on,” Pidge snarled.

“We figured something had gone wrong when Coran messaged us to say that Red had gone ballistic and left her hangar, but I was expecting, you know, a good old-fashioned assassination attempt, not whatever this is, _yikes_ ,” Hunk said.

“Paladins,” Coran’s voice cut in, “have you - good Lord! Keith!”

“Hey, Coran,” Keith sighed.

“Apparently the Siraesa are hella racist,” Pidge explained. “You might want to get a pod ready.”

“I can do you one better,” he replied. “Allura and Shiro just got back; we’re opening a wormhole for you now.”

“Permission to go back quick and destroy the Citadel?” Hunk asked as the promised wormhole sparked into existence in front of them.

“Regrettably, no.” Keith was pretty sure that was Allura, but everyone’s voices were starting to blur together a bit. “We don’t want to accidentally injure any innocent civilians, and I would like them to be alive when Shiro and I go down there ourselves to enquire as to what the _quiznack_ they thought they were doing to my Paladin.”

“Couldn’t hurt to inconvenience them a little first, though, if you get what I mean,” Shiro’s voice cut in. Out of the corner of Red’s vision he saw the Green and Blue Lions turning in tandem to shoot a combination of ice and vines at the citadel before they flew through the wormhole. Keith nudged Red’s controls, knowing she wanted to turn the whole planet to rubble, but right now Keith was mostly just relieved that he wouldn’t have to fly all the way back to the Castle.

“Let’s go home, Red.”


End file.
